Neuroscience Without Representations

Building a Brain-in-a-World View

Óscar Vilarroya (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

193 Seiten

2024
Elsevier - Health Sciences Division (Verlag)
978-0-443-19065-0 (ISBN)

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In Neuroscience Without Representations, an Open Access book, Oscar Vilarroya addresses the notion of “representation” as used in expressions like “neural representation” or “mental representation”. This concept is fundamental in neuroscience, yet there remains no clear, universally accepted view on what it means for a nervous system to represent something, what constitutes a neural activity as a representation, and what is being re-presented.

The book lays the foundation for a non-representational view of brain function. Building upon György Buzsáki’s critique of the theoretical framework underlying current cognitive neuroscience, Vilarroya argues that disciplines such as embodied and embedded cognition—collectively known as ‘4E cognition’—are driving a paradigm shift in our understanding of animal cognition.

Rather than grounding cognition solely in representations, the author proposes an alternative: understanding cognition as enaction—the meaningful engagement of an organism to address situational requirements. The book supports this approach through detailed analyses of recent studies.

Dr. Vilarroya heads the Cognitive Neuroscience Unit and the Social Brain Chair at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the Neuroimaging Research group at the Fundació IMIM, Barcelona. As a researcher, he has published studies in the field of neuroimaging of psychiatric diseases, as well as in the domain of cognitive science and theoretical neurobiology. Vilarroya has developed theoretical models applied to the neurobiological study of normal and abnormal cognition (The Dissolution of Mind Rodopi, NY 2002), and has used this theoretical background to apply neuroimaging techniques to the study of psychiatric illness, as well as cognitive functions in general. In this sense, Vilarroya contributed to the creation in 2003 the Unitat de Recerca en Neurociència Cognitiva (URNC) in the Department of Psychiatry at UAB. Since then, he has contributed with to the publication of nearly 20 articles in indexed journals of which 15 are in the top quartiles of their disciplines. In the last five years, Vilarroya has also been awarded three competitive projects (two national and one European) and 3 more by direct contract. The URNC has been consolidated in structural and functional MRI, including semi-automatic, manual and functional protocols. The URNC is already considered one of the most relevant neuroimaging units within ADHD, with publications that are now a pioneering reference (one 2005 paper with 60 citations in Web of Knowledge), and publications that offer one of the early diagnostic signs in psychiatry based on neuroimaging.

1. Mental Mechanisms
2. Biased and Incomplete Tasks
3. Analogies
4. Evolution
5. Neural Activity as Representation
6. A Non-Representational View of the Brain
7. Language Is Representational
8. Cognition in the Brain and in the Environment
9. Predicting and Preparing
10. Situational Awareness

Erscheinungsdatum	01.06.2024
Verlagsort	Philadelphia
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	320 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Allgemeine Psychologie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Psychologie ► Verhaltenstherapie
	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Humanbiologie
	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Zoologie
ISBN-10	0-443-19065-8 / 0443190658
ISBN-13	978-0-443-19065-0 / 9780443190650
Zustand	Neuware